Living, Loving and Creating in the Pacific Northwest

Tying Up Loose Ends

Six projects on the needles—that’s where I was last weekend. I’m excited to say I’ve pared it down to three in just one week. And getting there wasn’t easy.

These big garter stitch pillow shams are still a WIP

It’s been a busy few weeks—lots of travel, deliverables at work, and hardly any time for knitting. That, coupled with a setback, had me putting my creative self on hold—or so I thought.

What setback? I made a mistake I was careful not to make on my last sweater for Nick—I assumed that a single dye lot of a particular hand-dyed yarn, would be consistent enough to knit without alternating balls of yarn. Not so.

So there I was on a flight to Alabama and I lifted the window shade to discover that the back of my Woolful KAL (my first knitalong ever!) had a huge variation across skeins. Not only was the color off, but the sheen was completely different—a matte versus shiny in the Worn DenimTosh DK. I’m going to keep mum on which project I’ve chosen because I’ve done “the usual”—many variations. This is partly because I loved so many patterns, I grabbed elements from more than one.

Obvious color change when I changed skeins

The upshot is that after nearly finishing the back panel, I had to tear it out and start over. This killed my motivation to work on it. I was so irritated at myself for making such a basic error. The project was going more quickly than expected, and I was thrilled until I discovered I was going nowhere fast. *sigh*

Finished Seahawks Wurm Hat

Though at the time it can be hard to see them, there are benefits to hitting a roadblock on a project. You can look at other projects, until you are ready to get back in the saddle again.

For instance, I finished my Seattle Wurm hat after first putting it in hibernation when I decided the blue yarn I’d chosen was just too itchy for a hat. A skein of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino and I was off to the races again. This is presently acting as wall art in our home on Orcas due to the lack of pictures on the wall and the warm weather.

Sea-going Man Mitts

Then there are the Sea-going Man Mitts. I finished those today after quite a hibernation. This is a project, if I’d worked monogamously on it would have been finished in a couple of days. I just kept picking up that KAL instead—drawn to the softness of the yarn and beauty of the fabric. The acrylic feel of the Softee yarn from my grandma’s stash—a necessity for the project—just felt so foreign in my hands.

Knit basket. It’s nice when a project holds its own materials!

I’ve also made good progress on another gad-about-bag, but after seeing the Triple Baskets pattern on Ravelry I decided to knit the top rather than crochet it. I’m hoping it will go faster and be more consistent than the one I showed in my last post.

I’ve got some dedicated knitting time coming up this week, so here’s hoping I can knock off at least one more this week.